


With Tempest and Storm

by gayalondiel



Series: watsons_woes July 2011 challenge [6]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Gen, Reichenbach Falls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayalondiel/pseuds/gayalondiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson is shipwrecked en route back to Reichenbach and meets an unexpected ally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Tempest and Storm

**Author's Note:**

> watsons_woes LJ community posted a daily prompt challenge for July 2011 wherein you had to respond within 24 hours. These are my responses, so they are a little hasty and unpolished. Also damned weird.
> 
> July 6: Crossover
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** The Holmes characters fall in the public domain and are the creation of the wonderful Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. No ownership is implied or inferred. This is done for love only.  
>  **AN:** Bit of an odd one - I’m not really in PotC fandom. But I’ve killed Holmes on a ship and written a post-Reichenbach fic where I was mean to John, and given Watson post-hiatus stress disorder, so far this week. He needed a bit of cheering up.

It had seemed such a sensible idea. Watson had been returned perforce to a life alone, unless you counted the maids; and, bourgeois though it seemed, he didn’t, really. A few months after losing Mary he found that he was visiting her grave regularly and the comfort that it brought calmed the disquiet of his heart. So when he realised the third anniversary of his fateful trip with Holmes was fast approaching, Watson took the opportunity of informing his patients that he was taking a short sabbatical, and making arrangements to return to Switzerland. He thought briefly of following their circuitous route completely, but there was a faint tug at his heart pulling him to the falls, the only place he wished to be. He opted for a small ship travelling down through the Bay of Biscay, thereafter to travel through southern France to Switzerland.

It was not until halfway through the short voyage that the wind began to blow fast around the small vessel, whipping into a sudden squall. The transition from calm to terrifying happened so suddenly that Watson could barely register it and, not being a natural sailor, found himself panicking along with the few other passengers. The sailors rushed about them, trying in vain to right the ship, but there was an inevitability to the storm, as though it had been conjured by some mystic goddess of the deep determined to drown them all. The waves crashed and the wind howled, and someone unidentifiable stumbled against him and it was all he could do to cling to the side of the ship on the open deck. It seemed that they were in the grip of a great monstrous beast, and darkness swirled around him, seeping into his vision and dragging him away from himself.

When Watson came to the storm had quieted, although the sky was still ominously dark with low cloud. He was soaked through, and the world was moving in great swoops around him. With a groan, he sat up, and fell off the slab of driftwood he was lying on with a splash. Suddenly fully awake and panicking, he grabbed for the float. While he was flailing, mouth, nose and ears filling with freezing salt water, there was a percussive explosion of water behind him and a wave crashed over him. He submerged and for a long moment his lungs burned for air and he thought this was it, he was going to drown. Then a pair of hands wrapped around his arms and he was being hauled painfully up through the air, until he was unceremoniously dropped hard, dripping wet and shivering, onto the deck of a great ship with battered sails.

Men strode around him, talking and shouting in harsh voices that he could not make out, and he couldn’t bring himself to raise his eyes for a minute, focusing on trying not to shiver too hard. Finally a quiet but commanding voice spoke up, sending the men away in an overlapping chorus of “aye, sir”, and a man dropped lightly to sit beside him on the deck.

“You’re not a sailor,” he observed. Watson’s inner Holmes scoffed at the obvious statement, but he bit his tongue on saying it out loud.

“No,” he offered instead. “Captain,” he hazarded after a moment, because it seemed the right thing. The man beside him chuckled.

“That’s right, Doctor Watson,” he said. Watson turned his head at that to observe him in slight astonishment. He was a slender man, taller than Watson but surprisingly young for a captain. A grey bandanna was wrapped over the top of his long dark hair and he bore a stylised beard and moustache. He was rough and shabby looking, but under that veneer was a bearing of elegance and poise, and his eyes twinkled as he regarded Watson. “How do I know?” he asked. Watson nodded, and the man glanced up at the slackened sails flapping in the wind. “You’d be surprised what you hear on the wind.”

He seemed to drift into his own world for a moment, and Watson was wondering whether he should speak when the captain blinked and turned to him fully, holding out a hand.

“Captain Will Turner,” he said with a smile and a firm handshake.

“How do you do?” offered Watson, finding his tongue at last. Turner nodded his response and turned back so they were shoulder to shoulder, leaning against the bulkhead.

“Well, Doctor Watson, we need to decide what to do with you?”

“With me?”

“This is not a normal ship, Doctor.”

Watson thought of the way it had crashed into being from no-where, out of sight of land in the Bay of Biscay, perfectly placed to pluck him from the water at the opportune moment. “I had gathered as much,” he said.

“My business is that of a ferryman,” said the captain.

“Who are your charges?”

“The dead and the dying, sailors lost at sea. I take them on.”

“Am I dead?”

“No,”

“Am I dying?”

“You’re the doctor, you tell me.”

Watson grabbed his wrist with a sudden twist of fear, but found his pulse there fast but firm.

“Not yet,” he said. “Hypothermia is a danger, though.” Oddly, though, he was no longer shivering, despite the wet and the wind. As though he were apart from himself somehow.

“One we will deal with in time,” replied Turner. “You’re a strange one, Doctor Watson. You almost have a choice... I don’t do bargains,” he said cryptically, his voice deepening. “I’ll take those that offer and no more. But you’re not a sailor.” He turned his head and regarded him keenly. “Where were you going?”

“To pay my respects to a friend,” said Watson immediately, although for the whole journey he had avoided speaking to anyone about his purpose. Turner nodded.

“A grave?”

“No. There was no body. He fell... he drowned. That’s where I’m going.”

“At sea?” Turner’s eyes glinted, and Watson thought for a second of Holmes, sat right here on this deck having this conversation.

“I’m afraid not,” he replied, saddened that even that shadow of contact was denied him. “He drowned in the River Aar. I’m sure your ship is superb, but can you get into a landlocked country?”

Turner chuckled and rose to his feet. He turned and leant on the side of the ship, looking out to the horizon where the grey storm clouds were beginning to bruise with purple. Watson hesitated for a moment, and then followed him.

“Holmes,” said Turner abruptly. Watson turned from the horizon to stare at him. “I hear things on the wind,” he elaborated without explaining anything.

“Yes, Holmes,” he said, returning his gaze to the horizon. Turner frowned harder and then sighed.

“He’s not there.”

“He’s dead,” Watson managed.

“I don’t believe so.”

A ripple of something indefinable, hope mixed with disbelief and wonder, ran across Watson’s skin and deepened into his muscles, filling him.

“That’s impossible,” he replied. “I saw...”

“You saw him fall?”

Realisation crashed over him. “No.”

“Well then.” So simple, so firm. Captain Turner said he was not dead, and so he was not. It seemed so obvious, and it did not occur to Watson to ask where he was, then. If he was not dead, then he was somewhere.

Watson could feel his hands trembling. “Captain?”

“Doctor.”

“My wife?”

“Mary.” Turner tilted his head, as if listening. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“I know,” Watson smiled, oddly relived. “I was there with her, it was peaceful.” He frowned. “Do you have a wife?”

“I see her once every ten years.” Turner’s voice thickened, almost imperceptibly but Watson had spent too long working with Holmes not to have learnt a few of his methods.

“A long time to wait,” he said.

“She’s worth it.”

“So was Mary,” replied Watson, a fraction of a second before it all fell into place. “So, this is the choice? Stay, or go?”

“It seems so,” replied Turner. “Take your time.”

“It seems obvious,” said Watson. “My wife, Captain.”

“But?”

“Holmes never did very well without someone along to take care of him,” he continued. “And...”

“You miss him?”

“As I would miss oxygen, yes.” He sighed, ran a hand over his face. “Can you tell me something?”

“Anything that is in my power.”

“Is Mary... where she is. Will she be happy? Is she safe? Does she need me?”

Turner smiled. “I believe so,” he said. “Where she is she will need for nothing. Whether she wants for you, though, I cannot say.”

“Holmes will need me,” said Watson, surprising himself. It was not the decision he had expected to make, and it was not being made because he feared to die. For the first time in his life, he did not, but the time was not now.

“Will she wait for you?” asked Turner.

“That depends on whether I am worth waiting for, I suppose,” replied Watson. Something seemed to be tugging his heart hard, now the decision was made, but he knew that it was right. Mary was happy, a saint in paradise. Holmes was not dead, and so would need him. He glanced up and found Turner regarding him as though he could see through his eyes into his very thoughts.

“Will you wait for him?” he asked.

“A lifetime,” replied Watson, surprising himself again with the certainty in his voice.

Turner nodded, the captain very clearly back in his stance. “Very well then,” he said briskly, “we must return you to shore, or as near as we can get. I rarely get to take people to life, it is a privilege.” He held out his hand, and Watson took it happily.

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”


End file.
